The heads of Apple, Capital One, DreamWorks and Google each collect a
salary of just $1 a year, bucking the trend of digging for a bigger CEO
pay packet - the $1 million a year the typical CEO can get, reports
USA Today. While some experts laud CEOs for
making an important symbolic statement with their $1-a-year salaries,
others take a more cynical view.

The percentage of outgoing CEOs replaced by women increased 11% in 2006 and so far the upward trend appears to be continuing in
2007, according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., which tracks CEO changes daily.

Chief executive officer departures announced in
February jumped 11.4% to 124 from the 114 announced in January. The February figure was 13.4% higher than the
112 CEO changes in February 2006, according to Challenger, Gray &
Christmas survey data.

Microsoft
jumps seven places over last year to rank No. 1 in the annual reputation
survey "Annual RQ 2006" conducted by Harris Interactive. Johnson
& Johnson ranks second and 3M ranks third, followed by Google at No.4
and The Coca-Cola Company at No.5.

The average total cash and stock-based pay for the 13,000 directors of nearly 1,500 companies on Standard
& Poor's indexes rose 11.6% to $160,493 in 2006, on increased
workloads and responsibilities of Sarbanes-Oxley, according to Institutional
Shareholder Services.

In
January, U.S. employers announced plans to
reduce payrolls by 62,975 jobs, up 15% from 54,643 in December, - on cost
cutting; downturn in demand; and the closing of facilities - according
to monthly downsizing data released by Challenger, Gray &
Christmas, Inc.

The U.S. is in the midst of the largest entrepreneurial surge this country
has ever seen. Nearly 672,000 new companies with employees were created in
2005,
the biggest business birthrate in U.S. history, according to Small Business Administration
projections, via Fortune Small Business.

There
has been a lot of discussion about the astonishing pay bonanza for
corporate executives. In a special report on executive pay in the latest
issue of the Economist magazine, Edward Carr explains why most of them deserved it.
Here is a compendium of revealing stats on executive pay.

The
latest BusinessWeek magazine cover
story on "Beyond the Green Corporation" highlights how eco-friendly
and socially responsible practices actually help a company's bottom
line. Here are some key factoids on how it stacks up.